


My Father’s Violence

by idrilhadhafang



Series: Star Wars Rewrites — Backstory [29]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Characterization Rewrite, Darth Vader Redemption, Diary/Journal, Domestic Violence, Father-Son Relationship, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Luke Skywalker Is Not an Asshole, Mentioned Darth Vader, Other, POV Luke Skywalker, Past Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson is a hack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 07:56:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: A journal entry of Luke Skywalker on Ach-To, and his reflections on his father.





	My Father’s Violence

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author’s Notes: I was intending to start on my Dark Poe AU, but I read something on Luke that really pissed me off enough to want to write something about it.

From a young age, I suppose I should have known about my father’s violence. I heard reports of it scattered throughout the galaxy, as you did, but it didn’t reach my doorstep until I was nineteen. I can still remember the smoldering corpses of my aunt and uncle — I barely even recognized them, actually. They were nothing more than skeletons. I don’t know what exactly the stormtroopers did to them. 

I was twenty-two, and fending off durasteel boxes all but flung at me by my father. I was twenty-two, and having my hand cut off, feeling the searing pain of having it simply not be there anymore. I was defenseless before my father, but I would not cave to him. I would not join him. 

Of course learning that he was my father broke me. I couldn’t fathom it. That creature, being my father — that monster in a mask. There were periods where I looked in the mirror and wanted to rip off my own skin — but I feared what would be waiting beneath. 

I was twenty-three, standing above on a catwalk, trying to save my father. My father, not as mighty as he was when I faced him on Bespin — there were some cracks in the armor, some hints of regret, some hints of whatever love he still had for me. He threw his lightsaber at me when I pointed all that out, said I was unwise for lowering my defenses. He threatened Leia, and that was when I nearly killed him. 

I shudder to think of what I would have become if I had killed him. 

I don’t have any memories of either of my biological parents. My mother died giving birth to me, according to Artoo — and though he said she lost the will to live, I unfortunately don’t think it’s a stretch to think my father killed her, in his way. Even watching the recordings Artoo had, so long ago, of what my father did to her...

I’m not married. (Some actually thought I was going to marry Camie when I was young; how ridiculous would that have been!) But if I was, I can’t fathom doing that to my own spouse. It’s the sort of cruelty that you just don’t do. It’s unforgivable. 

The earliest instance of my father’s violence against me was when I was in the womb with my sister. My mother was trying to save him. Trying to persuade him to come home. It was when Obi-Wan confronted him that my father flew into a paranoid rage, believing that somehow my mother and Obi-Wan, of all people, were conspiring against him. He choked her then. A pregnant woman, and he attacked her. 

When I first saw that holo, I didn’t even know what to make of it. I still don’t. There was a period where I wondered what was so evil about me and Leia that my father had to choke our mother while she was pregnant with us. It wasn’t just us, I knew that much. And yet knowing that our father could have killed us...

I didn’t witness the rest of my father’s violence until I was nineteen. But I know that there were stories. What he did to the Rebel soldiers. What he did to my sister, and Han. What he did to the Tusken Raiders when he was nineteen himself. It seems like my father’s violence is interwoven throughout the galaxy like threads in a tapestry. 

My father has tried to apologize. I am on the fence about forgiving him, but I can love him still, as a son does. Leia doesn’t forgive him or love him, I can imagine. And I can understand. I can love him, for the man he was in the end. And the man he could have been. I don’t know what kind of father and grandfather he would have been if he hadn’t fallen. I suppose I’ll never find out. 

In terms of whose fault it was — well, there were people who played their parts. From what Obi-Wan told me, he had been too hard on my father at times, and Yoda wonders if he could have opened some communication with him so he wouldn’t have felt the need to go to Palpatine for help. They also suggested the Senate could have fought more against Palpatine — but then again, even so, how could the Senate have known he was a monster? In the end, though, my father made his choices. He’s still working in the afterlife to try and make up for his deeds. I wish him well in that, though it’s not my job to fix him. I don’t hate him, in the end. I only wonder what could have been. 

————

Luke put down his datapad and sighed. Even writing that journal entry, he felt like a lot had been taken out of him. Even revisiting what had happened, and to think that it had taken his beloved nephew...

What would they have all been if not for his father’s choices? What a life they could have lived. And if not for Snoke, he added mentally. Would Snoke have tried to affect Ben as he did?

He didn’t know. 

“Luke.”

It was his father’s voice. Luke turned around, and there was his father, a solemn figure in Jedi robes, looking the way he did before he fell to the Dark Side. He’d been twenty-two, just a year younger than Ben had been...

”I didn’t expect to see you again.”

”I had to. Luke...you should go to bed.”

Luke smiled faintly. “You sound like my father already.”

”I suppose. I wish I had been there for you, when you were young. There’s too much I missed.” 

“Maybe it’s not too late.”

A faint smile from Anakin, and he looked as peaceful as he had on Endor. (Endor, where they’d been together, happy...) “Get to bed, Luke. Your books will still be there, tomorrow.” His smile got slightly sly. “Not exactly pageturners, are they?”

And despite himself, Luke laughed. “They’re a bit dry, yes. But they’re important. They’re clues.”

”Yes,” Anakin said. “Perhaps.”

Luke got into bed and fell asleep then, listening to the eerie, peaceful quiet of Ach-To lulling him to sleep. 

 


End file.
